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They turn the vole head-first and gulp it down without tearing at it as a hawk would.

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Then they cough up a nice little "owl pellet" containing the hair, bones and anything else that was unpallatable. I've had the pleasure of digging through some of these and trying to identify the rodent they had eaten by the skull. Didn't really care for that class too much.

I guess the owl is there because there are enough voles to make the energy expenditure positive. Four outta five is really good. I tried one late cold December day to match a small hawk who was catching songbirds while I was shooting doves. It was running about 50 percent success on songbirds over a two hour period and I was only running about 30 percent on doves.

As usual, you have provided us with superb images of another of the great raptors. Again, your camera work is fantastic and I can only imagine that stalking those sharp-eyed subjects is a most challenging hunt.